BEACHCOMBER

101 YEARS OLD AND STILL AS ENERGETIC AS A SLOTH...

EXCUSE me if I am unusually ebullient today, but I have just witnessed the greatest show on earth. And I had to travel no further than the London Zoological Gardens in Regent’s Park to see it.

I had gone there to learn about their valuable efforts in Panama towards the conservation of pygmy three-toed sloths, and after a stimulating meeting, popped into their Rainforest Life enclosure to see how Marilyn, the zoo’s two-toed, long-time resident sloth, was coping with her new offspring.

I have written before in praise of sloths, and shall no doubt do so again, but nothing dims the exhilaration I feel whenever I see their purposeful lethargy. We may envy the impressive power of lions, the speed of cheetahs or the longevity of tortoises, but such abilities are beyond the wildest dreams of us humans. Sloths, on the other hand, are creatures we can all identify with and even hope to emulate.

I can watch Marilyn for hours, and indeed have spent hours doing so, just lying in a hollowed-out tree trunk pondering the question of whether to move or not. Occasionally she will twitch a limb or shift her grip, but mostly she just lies and ponders.

Everything about her at such times is uncannily similar to my behaviour every morning (or sometimes afternoon) when I am considering whether to get out of bed. To sleep, perchance to dream; to breakfast or not to breakfast? Or just to lie there pondering. Watching Marilyn doing nothing at all refreshes my inner sloth.

Yesterday, however, I saw another side entirely of my favourite sloth: the purposeful, energetic side, and it was astounding. Around 5.30pm, as dusk was approaching, she began to stir. First, as hunger began to overtake the joys of indolence, she moved a few feet in order to feast on a pile of carrots as her offspring clung to her tummy. He, incidentally, (or she, they are not yet sure of the sex) has been nicknamed ‘Lento’, meaning ‘slow’ but seeing the strength of his grip, I have suggested that ‘Velcro’ may be more appropriate.

Then, with junior still clinging tight, Marilyn went for a postprandial stroll around the enclosure, gracefully travelling at surprising speed across branches, logs, boxed-in power cables and anything else she could hang from, in order to survey the possible places to spend the night.

Amazingly, she finally settled on an arboreal perch right next to where I and another half-dozen or so remaining visitors to the zoo’s rainforest were watching her every move.

For the most part, she ignored us completely, leaving it to the zoo keepers to gently nudge us away when necessary, as much for our own safety as that of the sloths. (They have long and sharp claws, you know.) Finally she stopped, her head only a foot or so away from mine, and we looked each other in the eye and smiled.

This, as I said, is, in my opinion, the greatest show on earth. Just go to London Zoo near closing time and you may see it too. Or Marilyn may not move at all if she doesn’t feel like it.

But if that happens, I believe the zoo has other animals worth seeing too.